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The Decline of American Power
(Wall Street Journal) Fouad Ajami - Throughout the Middle East, populations long in the path, and in the shadow, of great foreign powers have a good feel for the will and staying power of those who venture into their world. If Iran's bid for nuclear weapons and a larger role in the region goes unchecked, and if Iran is now a power of the Mediterranean (through Hamas in Gaza and Hizbullah in Beirut), area leaders are sure to do their best to secure for themselves an Iranian insurance policy. The Islamic world is coming to a consensus that a discernible American retreat in the region is in the works. America's enemies are increasingly brazen, its friends unnerved. Witness the hapless Lebanese, once wards of U.S. power, now making pilgrimages, one leader at a time, to Damascus. They, too, can read the wind: If Washington is out to "engage" that terrible lot in Syria, they better scurry there to secure reasonable terms of surrender. The shadow of American power is receding; the rogues are emboldened. The writer, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.